


bright

by gotham_ruaidh



Series: Gotham Writes for Imagine Claire & Jamie [87]
Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-04-26 14:40:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14404242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gotham_ruaidh/pseuds/gotham_ruaidh
Summary: Claire, fighting against cancer, shares a quiet moment with Jamie. Modern AU, one-shot.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted at [Imagine Claire & Jamie](https://imagineclaireandjamie.tumblr.com/post/172761857968/i-was-rereading-a-breath-of-snow-and-ashes-and-i) on tumblr

“Feeling low energy today?”

Claire slowly nodded, weakly pulling the comforter higher around her shivering shoulders, burrowing into the mattress.

Jamie bent to kiss her forehead – careful to not disturb the soft headscarf shielding Claire’s bare head from the winter chill.

“I’ll be right back, all right? Just going to the kitchen. Do you think you’re up for some berries and toast?”

“Mmmm-hmmm.” Her voice was somewhere very low in her throat – it hurt just to make those two hums. He knew. Of course he knew.

“Love you,” he whispered against her temple – and then his feet padded away in the soft half-light of dawn.

Eleven months met – seven months married – six months since the diagnosis that had upended their beautiful, perfect life.

It was the cliché whirlwind romance – her a surgeon who had never had time for love, him an author newly freed from a years-long, toxic relationship. He had come to her hospital, looking for doctors to interview for his next long-form article about the human side of medicine. She had been asked by her boss to meet with the crazy writer for five minutes. Five minutes had turned into an hour – then coffee the next day – then dinner two nights later – and before she knew it, a stupidly happy wedding at City Hall four months later.

Right after they returned from their honeymoon – Scotland, the land of his ancestry – she had gone in for her routine annual physical. Had had the routine bloodwork done. She’d been cramping recently – but her period was coming due, nothing new there.

Joe Abernathy – her colleague, and also her primary care physician – called two days later and asked her to meet him in his office.

She still remembered how her gaze had fixed on the ink stains on his worn desk, as he spoke those words that would change everything.

“At least I know it’s not because of something I did,” she told Jamie later. “This form of stomach cancer is almost purely genetic. My parents didn’t live long enough for it to manifest – and I have no idea if their parents had it.”

He had held her – processing, listening, terrified.

“The best course of treatment is chemo. Much better than radiation.” By now her voice had slipped into the _Doctor Beauchamp Fraser_ tone that was always so effective with colleagues and patients. “I’ll go once every two weeks. Starting next week. We’ll need to scrub the apartment of anything that could make me sick.”

“Claire,” Jamie had interjected. “Will you be all right? Truly?”

“I’ll be fine, Jamie,” she had automatically replied. Not even thinking. “Perfectly fine.”

He had been there at her side every step of the way – sitting with her while she received the chemotherapy treatments; carrying her from the car up to bed, when she couldn’t take a single step; wordlessly gathering up the clumps of hair as they fell from her head; bracing her back as she retched and retched from the healing poison injected into her body; wrapping her with quilts and blankets as she shivered in the bed they shared, struggling some days to even lift up her head.

_Mo nighean donn_ , he had called her from the first. Strange words spoken in the language of his forefathers – quiet words of praise for the curls he loved so dearly. Even when the last of those curls had gone, and Claire’s head was capped with only the finest of downy hairs, and she cried and cried at her loss – still he whispered this name to her, and held her, and cherished her. A promise of his confidence in her, and in the life they would have together, once they closed this terrible chapter in their lives.

There was no life without him. That much she knew – her touchstone, when everything else had been stripped of meaning and promise.

Claire slowly, carefully turned onto her side, feeling as if it took two hundred years to shift her head on the pillow. Just in time to see Jamie pad back into the bedroom, balancing a tray of strawberries and toast and tea.

Gratefully she blinked up at him as he set the tray on the bed and plated a very small portion for her. His thirty-first birthday was in a few days; were those new creases at the corners of his eyes?

“I’m so sorry, Jamie,” she rasped.

He looked up then – smiling. Tired, but so happy just to be there with her.

“Whatever for?” He tucked the edge of the headscarf over the tips of her ears.

“I married you so that we could travel the world together. Raise a family. Share our hopes and dreams.” She coughed – and he was there, bracing her, holding her steady as he raised a cup of warm tea to her lips.

She drank gratefully, then sighed. “And here you are, playing nursemaid. Doctoring me.”

“Hush,” he replied. “Finish the tea. Don’t you know, Claire, there is nowhere else I’d rather be, than here with you?”

She sat up now, leaning against the headboard of the bed they had so happily purchased the day after getting engaged. It seemed like that had happened to another person, in another lifetime.

“You’re responding well to the treatments – that’s what all the doctors are saying. You know they’re telling you the truth.”

“Yes. But I feel so…selfish.” She sniffed against the tears that suddenly fell down her cheeks. “There are so many things we could be doing now. That we should be doing now.”

“Ah, but _mo nighean donn_ – we have a lifetime for that.”

He kissed her cheek – so gently – and handed her a small bowl of sliced strawberries.

“I’d like to go to Egypt, when I’m well again – to see the places I visited with Uncle Lamb.”

He looked at her pointedly, and she smiled just a bit, and began eating the strawberries.

“I’d love to take you there, Claire. I’ll give you the world, if I could.”

She swallowed, and smiled – tears coming full force now. Heart on fire with love for this man.

“I’ll settle for some toast, first,” she teased.

His smile – his joy at her appetite – was the simplest, most beautiful thing she had ever seen.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> originally posted at [Imagine Claire & Jamie](https://imagineclaireandjamie.tumblr.com/post/174501491875/please-continue-the-fic-where-claire-has-cancer) on tumblr

Jamie shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of the warm coat, shivering against the cold, eyes scanning the neat rows of headstones.

He didn’t come here as often as he should. What could he possibly have to say? Even if she could hear him, what would she say in response to the turns his life had taken?

Ah, there is was – the familiar mausoleum that some family had splashed out a lot of money for in the 1960s. She was further down that same row – peaceful and quiet under a beautiful willow tree. One of her favorites.

He swallowed, and followed his feet down the well-manicured footpath.

FRASER, read the headstone.

He was never good at this. He owed it to her, to say something. A quick prayer. An update on how he had been, since last he had visited.

But today – today he couldn’t find any words.

So he knelt to brush the stray leaves away from the headstone. Straightened up the glass vase, and put in the sprigs of evergreen he had bought from the older woman just outside the cemetery gates. Traced her name on the granite headstone that he barely remembered picking out.

What could he possibly say to her now, today?

I’m sorry?

I miss you?

I need you?

He startled as Claire knelt beside him, tucking her knit cap tighter on her still-bald head, wrapping her arm around her husband.

“There you are. I could barely find you – but once I saw your hair here down the row, I knew.”

She kissed his cool forehead, then turned to face the headstone.

“Hello Mrs. Fraser. I’m sorry I was never able to meet you.”

That woke him up. He blinked, and flailed, and her cool hand found his.

“I feel so bad that it’s been so long since I visited,” he rasped.

“Hush. You’re here now. *We’re* here now.” She squeezed his hand, heedless of the damp soaking through the knees of her jeans.

“Mom.” He cleared his throat. “Mom – this is Claire, my wife. She’s so beautiful, and so strong. Just like you.”

The wind picked up a bit, rustling the bare branches of the willow tree overhead. Whispering something in a language they couldn’t understand.

“She had cancer too, Mom. But she’s beat it. We were able to catch it in time. And I’m so glad she’s here with me. And I’m so sad that we couldn’t do the same for you.”

Now he sniffed – not just from the cold – and Claire lay her head on his shoulder.

“It’s OK to cry,” she said, so gently. “It’s just us here.”

He sniffed louder, then swallowed. “No. Not when I have so many things to be happy about.”

He shifted a bit then, and gathered her against him in a bear hug. She was still so thin – the legacy of her chemo treatments – but day by day, bit by bit, she was coming back to herself.

It was the greatest gift he had ever received.

“Mom.” Now he cleared his throat. “I want you to know – Claire makes me better. Makes me want more. And when she’s well enough to have kids, we’ll bring them here too. So that they know what an incredible woman you were.”

Claire hugged Jamie so tight, and soothingly ran her hands up and down the back of his jacket.

“I’m here for you,” she whispered.

“I almost lost you,” his voice cracked.

“I know. But you didn’t. I’m here. I’m still here.”

He burrowed his face into the side of her neck. “If I had lost you…after I had lost Mom…”

“Sshh. Don’t even think about it. Sshh.”

The wind rustled the willow branches, and the sprigs of evergreen waved in the breeze, and Jamie rejoiced in the woman he loved more than his own life.


End file.
